Vector based OS / ZOOM!

[rfenik]

The zoom feature in the handicapped access would be really cool if the resolution didn't drop when you zoomed in... since macs are so good at vector scaling and stuff it would be really cool if they abandoned resolution altogether and made the os all vector based....

then you could zoom in and out of applications using expose... zoom into parts of the screen and the fonts and everything would still look ok. of course looking at web graphics and stuff wouldn't look so good, unless the os converted everything onscreen into something no so resolution dependant.

it would be really cool..... plus it would make the 12" screen on my powerbook more bearable.

 

[TigerPRO]

That would be psycho! Cool!

 

[csubear]

not to be anal, but that would be part of the window server, which is lumped into mac OS X, but does not run in kernal mode.

 

[blueflame]

I love that idea

I also wish they would do this. really make a 3dimensional OS
that would be sweet
Andreas

 

[etoiles]

I am not quite sure why you would want to zoom in on windows (except for the special access), after all you are not going to get more information out of those windows.
But zooming out might be cool... imagine having a huge desktop (like those virtual desktops), what you see on screen is only a small area of the whole desktop. If you hit a key, your viewpoint backs out and you see the whole desktop with all the windows etc. You can move a frame around (relative size of your screen) and when you click or let go it zooms back in. Kind of an expose in reverse

 

[Fukui]

Actually they can do it, since the window server is inside an OpenGL "scene," I think one of the reasons that they aren't doing this...yet..is for performance reasons. Right now thier using textures etc for shadows and things like that, Unless you have a Radeon 9800 XT or something like it, I don't think something like that would be fast enough (imagine drawing brushed metal texture as pure vectors) it would be impossible on something like a Geforce 2MX or even a Geforce 3, especially at higher resolutions. Thats why right now windows are only textures on a 3-d surface in Quartz Extreme, all it has to do is translate a rectangle with texture...if it was all vetors, it would have to actually re-draw everything all over again every time you moved a window etc...it would look totally stunning though.